The Deindustrialized World

Confronting Ruination in Postindustrial Places

Since the 1970s, the closure of mines, mills, and factories has marked a rupture in working-class lives. The Deindustrialized World interrogates the process of industrial ruination, from the first impact of layoffs in metropolitan cities, suburban areas, and single-industry towns to the shock waves that rippled outward, affecting entire regions, countries, and beyond.

Seeking to hear the “roar ... on the other side of the silence,” scholars from France, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States share their own stories of ruin and ruination and ask others what it means to be working class in a postindustrial world. In Part 1, they explore the ruination of former workplaces and the damaged health and injured bodies of industrial workers. Part 2 brings to light disparities of experiences between rural resource towns and cities, where hipster revitalization often overshadows industrial loss. Part 3 reveals the ongoing impact of deindustrialization on working people and their place in the new global economy.

Together, the chapters open a window on the lived experiences of people living at ground zero of deindustrialization, revealing its layered impacts and examining how workers, environmentalists, activists, and the state have responded to its challenges.

This volume will appeal to historians, geographers, and social science scholars as well as anyone interested in the issues surrounding capitalist development, urban revitalization, and poverty, class, and community.

This is an important book. It enriches debates about deindustrialization by taking them in a number of new directions and by probing how the term is understood. Taken together, the chapters offer insightful comparative analyses on issues such as race, gender, gentrification, and the stigmatization of the white working class.Sean O’Connell, professor, School of History and Anthropology, Queen’s University Belfast

Steven High is a professor of history at Concordia University and the author of a number of books on deindustrialization, including Industrial Sunset and Corporate Wasteland. Lachlan MacKinnon holds a PhD in history from Concordia University and specializes in workers’ experiences of deindustrialization in Atlantic Canada. Andrew Perchard is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Business in Society at Coventry University.